V.D. PREVENTION IN THE FORCES
Sin,—" If a girl is walking with a soldier in the street, the Military Police may take her away at any minute to examine her. My dear Roberto, it is not done. They're very ill-mannered, the Allies, sometimes ; and now no wonder no decent girl will go out with the soldiers." So said "Woman of Trieste" in the article by H. N. Bentinck in The Spectator of January 17th, 1947. So might say any woman of countries now occupied by the Allies. Readers may think the statement is exaggerated or just another rumour. But it is strictly true. The men and women of German-occupied countries during the war resented most bitterly this habit of their German conquerors. Girls and women of all classes, married and single, and of all types, were subject to these "raids," and could be, and were, forcibly taken at any moment to prison or hospital for intimate physical examination to find out if they were infected with venereal diseases.
The following quotation is taken from a document entitled Regulations for Combating Venereal Diseases, dated September 25th, 1945, as adminis- tered by order of the Allied Kommandatur of Berlin: "All persons shown to be guilty of promiscuous sexual relations must be inspected regularly. . . . Dancing girls and barmaids in places of entertainment which, openly or not, offer opportunities for sexual relationships or are found by experience very often to conduce to them, as well as other persons of the female sex who regularly frequent such places, shall, unless there is proof to the contrary, be held to belong to the class of sexually promiscuous persons."
Such measures encourage many dangerous tendencies. Three are obvious: t. The men of the Forces for whose physical " protection " such measures are enacted tend to think promiscuity is expected of them, and that immorality does not matter if V.D. is avoided. Suggestion is more potent than teaching ; what is expected usually happens. As promiscuity increases, so the V.D. rate increases. Such suggestion and expectation on the part of the authorities is an insult to the men con- cerned. 2. Such physical examination and the reason behind it, whatever the character of the girls to whom it is applied, tends to create proz miscuous girls and women, or to drive them further into such life. It is a fact that many examined are found to be entirely free from V.D. 3. Such measures cannot but damage the frail understanding the conquered nations have of the ideals and actions of democracy. Sexual exploitation and injustice on the part of conquerors are no sound basis for that demn- cratic re-education which is the only hope for the future. Public opinion should demand that these long discredited, demoralising and futile attempts to reduce the V.D. rate should cease, and effort be concentrated on remedial, legal and educative methods based on sound principles of proved constructive value.—Yours faithfully,
KATHARINE B. liARDWIOC. Association for Moral and Social Hygiene, Livingstone House, Broadway, Westminster, S.W. 1.
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